Issue 18, Fall 1990

Issue 18, Fall 1990

On the cover: Illustration by Laura Woelfel-Madison based on a contemporary illustration of a Civil War submarine, possible the CSS Hunley.


Features

The Confederate Submarine H.L. Hunley

By James E. Kloeppel

When the Civil War began, the South possessed not a single naval vessel. To buy time until the Confederacy could build ships and form a navy, Confederate officials encouraged private individuals to use their own resources to capture or destroy enemy vessels and cargo. Two such individuals were Horace L. Hunley and James R. McClintock. These men would prove to be influential in the development of a new form of vessel: the submarine. The history of their submarine, the Hunley is laced with disaster and ends in mystery, but it made an important contribution to the history of naval warfare.


Alabama: The Play

By Charles S. Watson and Jennifer Willard

Alabama, by Augustus Thomas, was produced in 1891. It was not the first American play to use local settings and dialect, but it was immensely popular. This melodrama, though innocent of sophistication, is significant. Between its yellowed pages of sentimental dialogue and musty humor lies a message of goodwill and hope for a nation striving to reunite after a brutal Civil War. This article examines the inception, production, and legacy of this play.


Excerpts from the 1878 Gulf City Cook Book

With an introduction by George H. Daniels

In the fall of 1990, the University of Alabama Press reprinted a cookbook published in 1878 by the women of the St. Francis Street Methodist Church, Mobile. The new editions, with an introduction by George H. Daniels, is a volume in the Library of Alabama Classics, a series begun by the press in 1982 and designed to make available to the public the most engaging and provocative publications of the state’s past. A portion of Professor Daniels’s introduction is reprinted here, as are selected recipes.

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